Deacon White finally made the Hall of Fame

Deacon White finally made the Hall of Fame

The Deacon got the first hit ever recorded in an organized professional baseball league. He would have been in the Hall years ago if he had hit .400 in his best years instead of .392 and .387, but he stayed under the radar by failing to hit the magic number. In 2010, SABR picked White as their Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend.

He led the NL in RBI (retroactively compiled) in its first two seasons of play (1876-77), and also led the league in batting (.387), slugging average, hits, triples, runs created, OPS, WAR among position players, adjusted OPS and total bases in 1877. There was no MVP award back then, but he was the NL MVP that year. He retired in second place of all time in RBI, behind only Cap Anson, and was considered the greatest catcher ever to have played the game.

The most comparable player to White is Johnny Bench. Each was considered the best catcher in the game in his youth, and each got a second wind as a third baseman. On the offensive side of the ledger, Bench and White had identical career OPS scores of 126, but White's is more impressive because the league played a much shorter schedule when he was a superstar in his prime than it did when he was hanging on as an elderly player, so his great years have a disproportionately low effect on his career stats. In other words, when you consider the two men's careers in the context of their respective times, he was probably a bit better player than Johnny Bench, which means he's definitely a bona fide HOFer.